licking a pine cone.

today,i saw two locusts, one black and one red. they sat together on the cement of the sidewalk and moved their hind legs, first one, then the other. they touched antennae, and continued the dance.
Today, on my way home from the pool, under gathering thunderclouds, a boy walks past me. He doesn't look at me. I wonder why, but I am content not to know. The sun is heavy on my face as i cross the asphalt and head toward the pond. I touch the tip of my bleached hair to my tongue to test the potency of the chlorine. I stop, about to cross the road--I can't help myself. Under a pine tree i pick up a pine cone that lay nestled in reddish needles. I press it to my face and smell nothing. It is a hard-edged cone, not one of the ones that are easily crushed in a fist. I put my tongue one one of the hard brown nubs. I cautiously feel the spaces in between with my tongue, test the shoots with my teeth.
I think I'm going crazy: teething. Wet with saliva, the pine cone smells deep, rainy. I put half of the pinecone in my mouth as i cross the road, sucking it like an oversized pacifier. I don't care who sees me. I want to see everything, smell, feel and taste every bit of the world.
I'll never write as gritty, offensive words as Palahnuik, or be as crazy as Plath. I can't capture the soul of solitude in a blade of grass like Dickinson. I realize I haven't been looking for real people to be my soulmates. I don't go where they are: i stay in my house, in the woods, on pathways where i am least likely to encounter anyone. And then i feel alone. I crunch the tip of the pine cone between my front teeth--spit woody bits onto the grass.
Passing the first row of townhouses, I smell the thick musky scent of the mulch they laid down today. It's July 30th, and people are moving out. I don't want any of them to interrupt my solitude. And two days of reading and solitude feels like a decade. I pass a friend, getting into a parked car. "Hey, how are you?" I say. "Hi. I'm ok, you?" I think she's crying. I walk on, homeward.

Perhaps I'll go downtown, get out of the house. But probably not. I'm afraid I might find something like intimacy there.